Indo-Pak Foreign Secretaries to meet in New Delhi on Feb 25

After a 14-month hiatus, India and Pakistan will hold Foreign Secretary-level talks on February 25 during which Islamabad will raise all "core issues" and press for resumption of Composite Dialogue, which was suspended after Mumbai attacks.

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PTI

Islamabad

February 12, 2010

UPDATED: February 12, 2010 18:09 IST

After a 14-month hiatus, India and Pakistan will hold Foreign Secretary-level talks on February 25 during which Islamabad will raise all "core issues" and press for resumption of Composite Dialogue, which was suspended after Mumbai attacks.

"It was decided that Foreign Secretary-level talks between the two countries would be held on February 25 in New Delhi," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement here, accepting the offer made by India about two weeks back.

Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao had called up her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir and invited him to New Delhi for talks. She had proposed February 18 or 25 for it.

The PMO statement said the decision on holding the talks was taken at a meeting between Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

Bashir, who was present at the meeting, was directed by Gilani that the talks with his Indian counterpart should be "result-oriented and meaningful", it said.

The Pakistani side "should raise the core issues and impress upon India the need for the expeditious resolution (of these) through resumption of the Composite Dialogue", the statement said.

The Indian side, while making the offer of talks, had said that these would focus on terrorism emanating from Pakistan and made it clear that composite dialogue could not resume until "the environment of terror or the threat of terror" persisted.

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